I have tried the CV 15 and there was no corner smearing. I only rented the lens to see if I wanted to buy one rather than wait for the 14mm, but I decided I wanted the faster aperture. The shots looked pretty decent I can post some examples, later.

apsphoto wrote:
I have tried the CV 15 and there was no corner smearing. I only rented the lens to see if I wanted to buy one rather than wait for the 14mm, but I decided I wanted the faster aperture. The shots looked pretty decent I can post some examples, later.

Kit Laughlin wrote:
@ sebboh: thanks; I am familiar with the effect you mention, but that does not explain the asymmetry, as you say. If astigmatism is the cause, it will affect both left and right sides equally.

When you wrote did you mean that the more telecentric the lens design is the less this will be a problem?

And can you point me to any reference re. telecentricity of the 12/5.6 design; that's interesting. I can say that this lens performed perfectly on the Ricoh GXR and performs perfectly on the X-E1. And how does the CV 15/4.5 stack up in this sense?

yes, the more telecentric the design the less this added astigmatism will be a problem. i'm afraid i have long since lost track of the reference to the 12mm being more telecentric than the 15mm, 21mm, and 25mm voigtlanders. the best way to tell by looking at the lens if you don't have the lens diagram is to look in the back and see how distant the rear iris appears to be.

with regard to the 15mm  it is less telecentric than the 12mm, but i don't know how it compares to the 21mm and 25mm. the 15mm is also a sharper lens than the 12mm to begin with though. i remember seeing samples that indicated that corner smearing was present, but you'd be hard pressed to notice it unless you compared it to an identical shot taken with the gxr.

sebboh, I have taken the 12 away with me this weekend, and I will try to find something to shoot that shows off this lens (I hope!). I have used the CZ 15/3.5 on Leica and Canon FF bodies, and two copies of Nikon's 1424/2.8 in Nikon FF bodies, and the 12 was at least as good on the APS-C GXR (though not as wide, of course). I have not owned the 15if it is sharper, it will be a stellar performer. Now, it could be that I have not used the 12/5.6 enough on the X-E1 to see that people are talking about re. the corners; I will be looking closely now!

I have shot many interiors with the 12, and it is a true rectilinear lens, but all this work was done on the GXR, now that I think about it. No problems with any of the UWAs on that body.

See this is what gets me. To me and I know a large part of it is technique. But that 35 has far more pop...than the rx1. It's far more aggressive. I understand photos are developed but owning a few zeiss lenses and fast wides I'm familiar with the process. Whereas the rx1 is sharp but very gentle with it. It doesn't seem typically zeiss to me.

Well, guess it is hard comparing a true 35mm to a 35mm on a crop-body, but comparing the Fuji 35 to my Canon 50/1.4, the Fuji is a clear winner (even if the DOF is much shallower on the Canon). I really hope Fuji soon will release some more lenses though!

I took the XP1 out for 2 different shoots yesterday and it did both good and bad. The first shoot was during the day, and while it was inside, there was still enough light to shoot at a decent ISO and it seemed to focus okay enough. Will post a shot or two below.

Second shoot was a complete unknown to me AND at night; so I took both the Canon 5D (with speedlight) and the XP1. Used both - and unfortunately for the Fuji; found it much harder to focus in the dimly lit home than the Canon. I was on single focus - not continuous, so maybe I needed to change that? Not sure really. Shot in JPEG and the files look nice enough, but I would not have been happy at the shoot without the SLR. I'm sure I could get past this with enough practice and some more reading up on the camera, but I kinda expected to be able to replace the SLR with the Fuji. I know that the files will be different (jpeg vs. RAW) but I wasn't expecting the big difference in focus. The Fuji would just hunt and hunt - going back and forth trying to lock on. If I had practiced at all; I would have just thrown the damn thing in Manual focus and been at it (or if I had confidence in the M mount adapter, I would have used the CV lenses!).

Anyway, live and learn. I must say - it's WAAAAAAY easier to carry around with me though. That backpack with a 5D, 28-80L, 70-200L, speedlite, batteries, etc... is a heavy sucker. Throw in the stupid tripod and it's redonculous!

Katie: Going from an SLR to the Fujis, it is quite usual to struggle with focusing initially. Mainly because of how the two cameras have different ways of focusing (phase-detect for the 5D, contrast-detect for the XE/XPro). What this means in practice is that you need to point your focus point at different things. While you would successfully achieve focus pointing at an edge with the 5D, the Fuji would struggle. This is because the contrast-detect focus determines correct focus based on the sharp pixels within the focus square. Needless to say, if you're pointing at an edge where two objects are at separate distances from the camera, it will never be 100% sharp, and thus the camera will struggle. The solution is to focus on contrasty areas on the actual subject.

My preferred solution in such dark instances is to use manual focus. Press in the thumbwheel to get a magnified view (toggle left/right between 3x and 10x magnification), focus, lightly press the shutter to go back to normal view, compose and shoot.

Good luck anyway, I hope to see you participate more here! I'm a fan from what I've seen in the film thread.